I inherited my father's family history files, and am now my family’s historian. We have quite the family tree.
It has 3,019 people on it, with records backing up the names/dates/places. Most
of the records I have are saved electronically, and are also posted to my online
Ancestry.com tree — 2,915 such records to date. This data is also saved on
Family Tree Maker software, safely stored in my laptop and on a separate hard
drive. At any time I can sync my online tree to my hard drive tree, and can print
out individual and family reports, as well as
pedigree,
descendant and
Ahnentafel
charts. My hard drive ancestry files consist of 2,161 files in 306 folders, and
take up 6.17GB of space. My Ancestry photos take up another 738 MB.
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| smart phone snap of online tree |
I am, for the most part, a desk driven genealogist. With my laptop
before me, I read books written more than 100 years ago about towns small and large
situated throughout America.
I build my family tree with powerful search engines created by the Mormons in Salt Lake City—the Mecca
of American genealogy. Those same engines open up census records, vital
records, church records, military records, place history books, you name it – allowing
me to learn about almost every branch and leaf on my American tree. These things pop up
before my eyes with the click of a mouse.
If the Mormon’s engines don’t give me what I want, I turn to online
databases from places like the
New England Historic Genealogical Society, and the
Wisconsin and
Minnesota Historical Societies. Some cities have put their materials online. Even a
little town like Westfield,
Massachusetts has an
online data site.
Looking for a grave? Check out
www.findagrave.com.
Want a list of what’s out there on the world wide genealogy web? Be overwhelmed
at
http://www.cyndislist.com/, with
its 331,386 (and counting) links to genealogy websites.
I am part many things, including Norwegian and English. The
Norwegians and the Brits (among others) have made many of their genealogical
documents searchable online. Here is a Norwegian sample: the 1865 folketelling
for my
ancestor Fredrick Bang. When I need to translate, these sites often shift to English upon request. And
Google Translate sometimes does the trick. Google Translate tells me “
folketelling” is Norwegian for "census." His occupation? He was a “Spillemand,”
which Google Translate says means "
fiddler" in Danish -- Wikipedia says it's
Nordic dance music, typically involving the fiddle. Somewhere in my youth I heard that one of my mother’s ancestors
was a musician. Perhaps this is the one. Of course, we were told he taught the
royals…. Every family has a “royals” story in it, yes?
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Daughters of the American Revolution
library, photo from DAR website) |
Modern technology made this possible. When my father started working on this tree (c 1970s), it was harder. He built the tree after driving from Minneapolis to Salt Lake
to use the
Family History Library. While I lived in Washington, D.C.,
every visit he made included a trip to the
Daughters of the American Revolution(DAR) Library or the
Library of Congress, or both. He wrote notes long-hand and
created hand-written pedigree charts. But no matter how hard he tried to grow
our tree, there was simply a lot of data he could never find because he
couldn’t go everywhere and see everything.
Before my parents’ time, genealogy was even harder. Before I
ever went to the British Archives online to find George Merriman's will (above), I knew there was one, because in 1907 a genealogist named Waters traveled by boat to England to look
at it. Can you imagine? He wrote it up in a book called "
Geological Gleanings of England" and I found it online at Ancestry.com. The will was also transcribed in a 1913 book I found at
Archive.org while simply searching online for the name “
George Merriman.” I liked the Merriman book enough to have a copy printed, generally easy to do at
Amazon.com.
But until I went online at the British Archives, I never saw it in its original
form. There were, of course, no copy machines in in either 1907 or 1913.
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| Lewis Mills Norton, from History of Goshen |
Going back further in American genealogy, there once lived in Connecticut a “
Nutmegger” named Lewis Mills Norton (1783 - 1860).
He was a church deacon, and got the idea that people might want to have a
written record of where they came from. He lived in Goshen, and his decades-long work led to the
publication of the
History of Goshen many years after his death. .
If you go online and open the first few pages of this 652 page book, you’ll
learn that Norton “was accustomed to carry pencil and paper wherever he went,
and he recognized in every man and woman he met a possible source of wished for
information, for which he was not slow to ask, nor negligent to record…. He
traveled hundreds of miles, wrote hundreds of letters, examined records of probate
courts, of towns, and of families, was often on his knees to read the
inscription upon some ancient gravestone, deciphered old accounts and private
journals….” (Hibbard, Augustine, “The History of the Town of Goshen,
Connecticut, with genealogies and biographies based on the records of Deacon
Lewis Mills Norton” (Hartford, CT 1897) at 7.)
Norton was also my “cousin” -- he is actually my first
cousin 5 times removed. (That makes him MUCH older than I!) Some time after he
died in 1860, his papers were given to the
Connecticut State Library in Hartford. Included in
those papers is a bound book which contains Norton’s hand-written genealogy of
the Mills family.
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| From Norton's genealogy of the Mills family, on file at the Connecticut State Library |
I am not connected to Goshen,
but I am a Mills. In this beautifully scribed book, Norton writes about his grandfather
Joseph Mills (1728/29 - 1792), mother Charity Mills (1759 - 1843), aunt
Penelope Mills (1755 -1814), and her daughter Charity Remington (1788 -
>1849). Charity Remington is my 3
rd great grandmother. She and Norton were
contemporaries and first cousins. She lived in New York
and he lived in Connecticut,
and I do not know if they ever met. But he meticulously recorded family births,
deaths, and places pertaining to his mother’s namesake and many other
relatives.
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| Photo from Connecticut State Library website |
I cannot read this precious document at my desk. Indeed, to
access it I must travel to Hartford, get a library card from the Connecticut
State Library, order the book from an off site archive, return later when it
arrives, put all my possessions (other than pad of paper and pencil) into a
locker, and go into a “cage” of sorts. I read at a table under the supervision of a staff librarian. I am allowed to
photograph pages. And I may ask a librarian to make copies of pages. Rather
than collecting payment up front, they send the precious copies to me by mail with an
invoice, because, I am told, their patrons always pay.
This book is just one example of why sometimes you need to
go there.
I haven’t yet made any trips solely dedicated to “digging up
dead relatives” (one of my favorite sayings), but I have been able to tack on dead
relative research in London, Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C.,
Minneapolis, a whole bunch of towns in New England, and, arguably, Aruba (read to end).
I just returned from a family trip to Massachusetts
and Connecticut.
Before I ever knew I had ties to Massachusetts,
I married into a Massachusetts
family. I am thus fortunate to have living relatives in Longmeadow, Massachusetts,
right on the Connecticut border, only 30 minutes from the Connecticut State
Library. When I visit, I spend time with my 87-year-old mother-in-law. I
typically bring photos and a tape recorder, and gather stories of my husband’s
side of the family. She tells wonderful stories, and they are part of my husband’s
and daughter’s family tree and, by extension, mine. I also spend time with my
brother-in-law and his family. They are great people, and I value these living
relatives more than my dead ones.
These living relatives are also gracious and tolerant enough
to allow me to traipse all over the place, taking photos of graves, visiting
local libraries, and searching town records. I come back in the evening and
share my day’s activities, and they give me the great gift of acting
interested. I consider myself VERY fortunate that these living relatives live –
by shear coincidence – so near my dead ones!
When my in-laws moved to Longmeadow
years ago, I didn’t know that Penelope Mills (above) lived next door in
Agawam, Massachusetts in the 1790s. By then she was
married to Jabez Remington. Jabez is my most elusive dead relative, and indeed I call him
“the elusive Jabez.” I know now that Jabez and Penelope lived in Agawam because
the last time I was at the DAR (I extended a business trip for a day in their
library), I found a copy of
Samuel Flower’s Account Book, which showed Jabez
and his family purchasing items at his store in Feeding Hills in the 1790s. Feeding Hills was part of Agawam (thank you
Google maps and
Wikipedia). I couldn’t
have found that account book online—I needed to be at the DAR to access it. And
that account book led me to Agawam.
No one in my living family seemed at all surprised that I wanted to attend the First Baptist Church of Agawam (founded 1790) during my recent visit. I’m
not a Baptist, but I come from Baptists, and Jabez once declared himself one. Off
I went to church. After the service I stayed for pepperoni, cheese, grapes, and
cake during coffee hour. When I explained my presence, I was immediately
directed to the church historian. She is an older woman from Agawam – her ancestors were founders of the
church and unlike my family of roamers, they never moved on. This sweet lady
told me she would head home and look for Remingtons in her files. She
also introduced me to others as being “from Michigan.”
This happens often – New Englanders seem to put all the Midwestern “M” cities into a single bucket. I also learned that the
historian has had breast cancer (twice), and seems to know every doctor around
town, but she doesn’t know my radiologist brother-in-law…yet. She gave me
directions to her house so the next time I visit I can come by. Until then, letters will have to suffice, since she is not much of an internet user.
What other things did I learn on my recent meanderings?
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| Photo taken Memorial Day week 2014. Grave right, stump left. |
|
I saw the grave of Penelope Mill’s father Deacon Joseph
Mills (1728/29-1792) in Norfolk,
Connecticut. You can see the
death's head with wings iconography of the headstone, and read the stone's stark inscription on the
Deacon's grave at Find-a-grave.
But it is not the same as standing on a hill amid the old stones and looking at
your ancestor’s grave. In some ancient tome I read that his grave was in the
shade of a big tree. The tree is gone but the stump remains. Because I was at
his grave the day after Memorial Day, I paused to give thanks for the role he
played as a town leader during the American Revolution. He also watched his two eldest sons (my uncles) go to war and never return.
During my visit I read Norton’s (perhaps c. 1850?) account of his
(Norton’s) visit to his grandfather Mills’ grave. Norton says the graveyard is some
three fourths of a mile north from Mills’ home. Norton writes of the grave
inscription, and closes with a statement about his “honoured grandfather” who
“was a man of humble piety…remarkably affectionate and interesting in his
family and elsewhere.” Norton continues, “I do not remember his funeral, and
was probably not present being then less than 9 years old. My recollections of
him are distinct, as I was standing by him in his Southwest room, telling me
bear stories, one of which stories is now clear in my recollection.” Norton
didn’t recite the story, which more than 160 years later I regret.
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| from Johnson-Roberts postcard library |
In Norfolk
I also visited the public library. I always start in a library, to confirm what
I already have in books and capture things not available online. The space
was beautiful and the people kind, but there wasn’t much there for me to learn.
The Historical Society was closed, but the Town Clerk was incredibly helpful. I
found many land deeds involving the Mills family and my elusive Jabez
Remington. He signed with a mark—in contrast to his wife Penelope Mills, who
could sign her own signature. (That’s my elusive Jabez for ya.) Jabez bought
and sold land to relatives and others. And each time he did, his residence
was noted in the deed, e.g. Jabez Remington “of Norfolk” or “of Suffield.” Ah, that was news.
I hadn’t seen any
Suffield records for Jabez. Indeed, no one seems to know who Jabez’
parents were, but there are many Remingtons in
Suffield. Had I not been at the Clerk’s office I would not have found this clue
to the elusive Jabez! I shall add time in
Suffield to my next trip to New England.
In
Simsbury, Connecticut and
Westfield, Massachusetts I learned that some
libraries actually allow you to drink coffee while looking at ancient books. (By
the way, the Wisconsin Historical Society also allows this practice, as long as
your drink has a lid.) The archivist in Westfield
is now looking at boxes of old records from local Baptist churches in search of
the elusive Jabez. The genealogist in Simsbury
pulled photos of local graves for me, including one of my ancestress Sarah Spencer Case (1635-1691), whose great-granddaughter Susannah Case (1726-1767) married Joseph Mills (above). I
spent an hour looking at vital records on microfilm (remember microfilm?) and then headed a few feet away to find Sarah and other dead relatives in their resting places.
At the Free Library I met a fellow
DAR member from the Simsbury chapter, named in honor of
Abigail Phelps. While in town I also had dinner in
a tavern built in 1780. I’m guessing at least one
of my ancestors stopped there at some point….. The tavern was originally built by a
Pettibone. I descend from American immigrants William Phelps (1593 - 1672) and John Pettibone (1609 - 1638), so these early Simsbury residents are no doubt “cousins” of some sort.
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| Marker for original Simsbury meeting house, now within cemetery borders |
In Simsbury,
we talked a bit about where the original church meeting house was built. This
was a VERY big deal at the time. It tore the town apart. And I think it might
have been one of the reasons my ancestors left Simsbury
and moved on, first to
Canton and then to
Norfolk. That was before
the elusive Jabez took them to Westfield, and Agawam, and Suffield (?), and
finally to the Finger Lakes of New York where he appears to have died before the 1810 census, which lists Penelope but not Jabez Remington. I came home from this
trip with some fresh clues about the elusive Jabez.
At the State Library in Hartford I reread Norton’s book. I had read
it on a prior trip, and on this trip I asked for copies of even more pages to
be made. I also stated that “I just want to keep this book” – which kicked off
a lively discussion with the librarians about which was worse, saying that to
an archive librarian or telling a TSA officer you have a gun in your carryon
luggage….. (I think the gun business must be worse). I also found the text of
the will of Joseph Mills, the father of Deacon Joseph (above). He died in Simsbury in 1783. The
will was on microfilm in the State Library. I never got the hang of their
microfilm machine, so staff patiently loaded the films for me….
What I have learned on my meandering genealogy trips is that
sitting at your desk is not good enough. It is a great starting place, and
indeed you can go far sitting in front of your computer screen. But you cannot
do it all without visiting your dead relatives. There is nothing like simply
being there, where they lived, worked, played and died. There is nothing like
meeting the people who work in this field. They are amazingly accommodating and
interested in the subject. They are also interesting and fun to know.
There are still many places for me to go as I dig up my dead
relatives.
Here is a map with some of the places they lived in Connecticut alone. My next trip to Longmeadow will be in
September. I look forward to seeing my living relatives. And my dead ones. And
some new friends.
Post script: What am I doing with what I found in all of
these places? Yup, I am scanning the documents, posting them to my Ancestry.com
tree, where they will leave hints for others. Within days I will find my
scanned documents showing up on other people’s trees. These people may not be
able to visit these little towns in Connecticut and Massachusetts,
and I like the idea that I’m helping them build trees at their desks.
But I won’t do that until I get home. Right now I am putting the finishing touches on this blog while at my favorite vacation spot, the
Manchebo Beach Resort in Aruba. The last time we came to Aruba I went to a
Dutch.English church service, so I could feel a bit closer to my ancestor Jan Woutersen, who left Old Amsterdam for New in 1659. He never made it to Aruba (he settled instead in Flatbush, NY). But Aruba was a Dutch colony. Perhaps I have "cousins" here? Travel – and technology – are both wonderful. This blog entry is posted from Sunny Aruba.
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| Photo by friend Yvonne, who blogs at PeripateticDispatches.blogspot.com |
Find my dead relatives by using
this link (search by name).
Here is a map with some of the places they lived in Connecticut alone. My next trip to Longmeadow will be in
September. I look forward to seeing my living relatives. And my dead ones. And
some new friends.